General Sir Ian Hamilton (second from right) with three senior officers from the Dardanelles campaign: the navy’s Commodore Roger Keyes, Vice Admiral John de Robeck, and Hamilton’s chief-of-staff General Walter Braithwaite. Photo: Australian War Memorial H10350
If only the British Government had listened to a naval voice in 1915, the whole Gallipoli campaign would have ended differently, the war shortened and the Allied death toll much reduce, according to Mark Baker, author of Phillip Schuler: The Remarkable Life of One of Australia’s Greatest War Correspondents.
As it happened, though, the British Government listened to Australian journalist Keith Murdoch who wrote an inaccurate account of the Gallipoli campaign blaming British leaders like General Sir Ian Hamilton for needlessly causing Australian deaths and calling for an end to the campaign. This happened shortly after publication and Murdoch’s lobbying the British Government.
